


blow him back into my arms

by bravepress



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravepress/pseuds/bravepress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au; harry is probably crazy. he decides that he doesn't care, as long as it means he gets to keep seeing louis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blow him back into my arms

**Author's Note:**

> huge thanks to nina, the best beta reader.

 

Harry wakes up shivering on the sofa two days before his twenty-second birthday. He is weighted down by dread. It's not until he realizes he's still holding Louis' hand that he manages to figure out why.

He's been dreaming about this for the past few weeks, in the hazy, disbelieving way he used to dream about exams or dental appointments. The scenario had always seemed so separate from their lives, but reality has settled down in front of him and refuses to be ignored. Louis' fingers are cold and so is the rest of him and his eyes are shut and  _he isn't breathing-_

It's not a surprise, with the fever Louis had been fighting last night, the way his blood pressure had dropped. It was always going to end this way. But still.

He scrubs a hand over his mouth. He doesn't cry, and he doesn't get sick in the kitchen sink. That comes later.

 

..

 

His birthday passes in a haze of university paperwork and cremation arrangements. The one small mercy is that there really isn't anyone to call. All Harry has left is a sister he hasn't spoken to in years, and Louis never talked about his familiy other than to mention that he left Doncaster as soon as he got the chance.

Every part of his body aches.

 

..

 

"So, how are you doing?"

The girl from the apartment next door comes over to bring him a casserole, but she  _hovers._ He bites back the first few words that spring to mind ( _I'm alone_ and  _I miss him_ and  _sometimes I don't get out of bed for days at a time_ ) and shrugs. "It's sort of... it's weird, without him here."

She hums sympathetically. "Did it happen quickly, at least?"

The words catch in his throat. He has to force out a hoarse  _no,_ because it was the furthest thing from quick. So much of what Harry has left of Louis is medical ephemera- the little box of Fentora tablets on the coffee table, the emesis basins stacked under the sink.

She stays for a few more tense moments and then excuses herself, apologizing all the way out the door for his loss. Her jarring Boston accent rings behind her. Harry's gran taught him manners, if nothing else, so he thanks her for the casserole and conversation. He waits until she's back in her own apartment to break down on the floor.

 

..

 

The ashes come back to him in a small urn. He sets it aside on the piano, unsure of what to do.

 

..

 

The first round of exams rolls through campus, and Harry becomes startlingly aware that he isn't prepared. He hasn't opened any of his textbooks, other than to slip the receipt between the cover and title pages.

He can't bring himself to study. It's easier to slip into the sharp ache of loneliness. 

 

..

 

It takes Harry three weeks to start boxing up Louis' clothes. He finds the Leeds shirt and dials Gemma's number with shaking fingers. He hasn't needed anyone other than Louis in years, but Louis isn't here now and he wants human contact, a touch or a kiss or  _words,_ damn it. 

The number has been disconnected, of course. He doesn't allow himself to feel surprised; it's been two years since he last tried to call. But the realization that he is utterly alone, without even Gemma's mercurial temper for company, hits him like a punch.

"Okay. Okay, fuck," he whispers. "I can do this."

 

..

 

He really can't do it, though. Not alone, which he very much is. He's an ocean away from anyone who would actually understand that he has lost someone dear to him. The only reason he keeps going to class at all (even though he really only shows up once or twice a week) is because he can't stand the idea of crawling back to Cheshire without a degree. He calls in to his tutoring job and quits. It's hard to deal with smiling faces, when the face in the mirror shatters every time he makes an attempt to look happy. Besides, there's enough money left over from his inheritance that he can afford the apartment without it. Once he loses that last tenuous connection to his old responsibilities, he has nothing left to distract himself from the Louis-shaped hole in his life.

 

..

 

Harry steps out onto the balcony to take the call and slides the door shut behind him. The night feels empty; he can't even hear the hum of traffic from below. A streetlight spills, golden, across the alley.

"Lou, it's me, it's Zayn. Sorry for calling, I just-"

Harry stutters out a confused little breath. He doesn't recognize the voice, but the accent is as familiar as Louis', and this is the first time someone's called Louis' phone since-

"No, it's. It's Harry, sorry."

"Oh." A short, crackling pause. "Nice to meet you, yeah? I've heard loads."

"You too." The words slip out of his mouth easily enough.  _Zayn._ Another piece to add to the puzzle of Louis' life. Zayn who wants to talk to Louis. Zayn who thinks Louis is  _still alive._

"S' he aroud, then? I didn't mean to bother you," says Zayn. Harry can hear the hopeful note in his voice.

"No. He, um." Harry clears his throat. He's never even heard of Zayn before, but now he's got to explain that, regardless of whatever Louis had been to Zayn, he isn't that anymore. Death has a talent for breaking relationships down into subtly altered memories and grief. He kicks the toe of his boot against the railing until he can focus on something other than the hollowness in his chest. "He passed away. About a month ago."

Silence.

The line clicks. Harry is left staring at his phone.

 

..

 

"Lou-  _please,_ I miss you so much, just. Please." Harry keeps talking until he runs out of breath, words dissolving into sobs. "Please, I. I miss you, I love you."

Harry's head drops to his knees. He's shaking so hard. He hasn't had to deal with a panic attack on his own in ages, and this has gone past the point where he can talk himself out of it. "Please come back," he mumbles. "Please." It's probably related to the fact that he's dizzy and hardly getting any air at all, but he could swear he feels a small hand press between his shoulder blades.

And he can almost hear the reply-  _I'm here, it's okay. Just breathe, love. Just breathe._

 

..

 

The weather is bad enough that for a few days Harry refuses to leave his flat. He drowns himself in Discovery Channel reruns and too-strong tea and finally decides to do the laundry that has overtaken his bed for the last few weeks. When he folds the sheets and realizes that they smell like detergent instead of Louis, he has to sit down on the piano bench for awhile. It feels easier to sleep on the sofa, after that, because it still smells like cinnamon (and sickness, but that had been as much a part of Louis as anything else). 

He wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of piano music. It takes him a few moments to figure out where it's coming from, and he makes ineffective slapping motions at his iPod before he looks over to the piano, and-

_Louis._

This is a dream. Obviously. Honestly. It can't be real. But he can't tear his eyes away from the line of Louis' back as he finishes the piece.

"Lou," says Harry breathlessly.

Louis whips around, eyes wide, and disappears.

 

..

 

It keeps happening. He dreams of piano music and Louis sitting on the sofa next to him, but Louis fades away whenever Harry tries to speak. It seems to him that his subconscious should be focusing on his and Louis' memorable experiences- their trip to New York to visit Niall, the time they'd had a picnic in the back of their sociology class. But what he has latched onto is Louis at his most stripped-down. As much as Harry loved (loves) every version of Louis, this has always been the one that makes his heart go soft.

Harry is probably crazy. He decides he doesn't care, as long as he gets to keep seeing Louis.

When he's feeling up to it, he gets takeaway from a small Italian restaurant near the university. It never stops feeling strange to run into people he used to see every day with Louis, before the  _Lou_ part of  _HarryandLou_ had been stripped away. It's easy to give Liam a quick smile while he's ringing up Harry's breakfast at the cafe, but it's even easier to turn down his invitation to go out for drinks. They'd all known Louis on such a shallow level, thinks Harry, a little disdainfully. They don't understand that Harry's life has changed irrevocably. 

Harry settles in. He comes home every night and goes to sleep as quickly as he can, waiting for the telltale shudder that signals something has changed.

 

..

 

"D' you know you're dead?" mumbles Harry. His lips are numb, stained with cheap red wine. He can still touch the bottom of a bottle, even if he can't touch anything else that matters. 

Louis' face is pale. Harry can't tell whether or not it's because of the dim light thrown off by a streetlight below his window. Maybe it's just his new color, in death. He wants to reach out and touch his face, to see if Louis' skin is as cool as it had been on the morning he didn't wake up. Harry has a fleeting worry that his questions will make Louis vanish in a puff of smoke, free to  _move on_ to something better. He hopes not. He wants to be a little selfish about this.

But Louis is still looking steadily at him. "Yeah, Haz," he says quietly.

"I miss breakfast with you before class. And tea. And your weird music." Harry's drunk enough for this, now. "I miss the way you feel."

The windows are flecked with ice. A fractured sort of light casts shadows across the room. Louis' eyes are so blue and so, so sad.

"Harry," he starts.

"When you died." Harry curls his fingers around his mug. The heat clears his mind. "When you died, it was like every part of me you'd ever touched started burning."


End file.
